For Jennifer Olding, founder of The Happy Guts’ Company, the confinement period also helped her turn her pop-up shop dream into a reality. She says it’s not an exaggeration that “I could ferment from the time I could walk. It’s basically in my DNA.”

Her mother, originally from northeastern China, was an avid gardener, and recipes were passed down in her family not just for kimchi, but other fermented foods too, like fish, daikon radishes, bean sauce, rice wine and more.

“Fermentation is a science,” Olding says, adding that it’s easy to try but the best result comes from “ensur[ing] you ingredients are as fresh and seasonal as possible”. Her products are organic-certified, and she’s a fan of trying no-waste, even buying up local chive flowers that would have otherwise gone to a compost heap, from which she produced vinegar.

Olding initially started making kimchi in Luxembourg as a hobby, albeit in 20kg batches. “I couldn’t eat that much so I posted on an online group to see if anyone wanted some, and basically I had nothing left.” It built up from there, and two years ago she began THGC to share her love of fermentation. She had already been selling products like kimchi and also a range of kombucha, but then confinement hit. For Olding, this period didn’t change much for her personally (although she states she was glad to see others try their own fermentation and baking sourdough bread), but professionally it may have just been a small blessing in disguise.

Olding had started THGC from the basement in her own home, later focusing more on B2B sales as the company developed. Just before lockdown, Olding had signed a contract for a new production facility, hoping to use the space as an office and a place where buyers could collect her products. Although she had “come up with the [pop-up] idea before, I said, ‘I’ve got to do this’ as soon as covid hit”. She adds that the pandemic “really changed my perception about how to encourage people to shop locally more, to shop seasonally”.

“What’s really interesting about fermentation is you see how small elements come together with patience and time to bring something together so wonderful,” she says. “I think it’s the same as our community: if you can bring different people together, you can come up with something wonderful.”

Read part one of our "Back to the roots" series here. 

An alternate version of this article appeared in the Delano October/November 2020 print edition.